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and he was such a good writer too.  I didn't remember him as such a good writer, having only been exposed to his mathematical writing about Relativity.  And even tho I took Honors Calculus, the Theory of Relativity is not the easiest set of concepts to understand.  AS a result, I remembered him differently.  

He touches all the right places doesn't he?  This almost last para is the one that says it all for me.  It is why I have been such a societal interloper all my life.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

Thanks a lot for tuning me on to this essay.  I'll return to reread it.

alohapolitics.com

by Keone Michaels on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 10:10:44 AM EST
Funny, I found his original papers on Relativity (the General one specially) clearer than most textbooks, with the definite exception of J.A. Wheeler's.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 10:19:22 AM EST
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"Relativity" is a gorgeous little popular science book. Very readable.

Never occurred to me that digging out his original papers might be a useful thing to do. My understanding of Gen Rel still isn't very good.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 10:27:47 AM EST
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There is a little booklet of original papers of relativity published by Dover. In 1915 physicists didn't know about differential geometry or tensors, so Einstein actually had to explain the geodesic equation and all that, and he does it better than most textbooks.

I'm not saying that the subject is easy, but that (as happens so often) it's better to read the original than some thrice-regurgitated version. Of course, the writing of Wheeler is also original and has the benefit of 50+ years of hindsight, but still...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 10:42:05 AM EST
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My first 'popular' relativity book was the one by Landau, which has lots of cartoons. I got it when I was 10 and it took me quite some years to understand it ;-)

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 10:44:23 AM EST
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